DAS Italia protects, stores and analyses its data using TimeXtender

Legal Protection for All 

Founded in 1959 and with its main offices in Verona, DAS Italia is committed to guaranteeing equal opportunities of legal defence for all of its clients. Fully aware that the Italian justice system often operates at a nightmarishly slow pace, DAS seeks a quick resolution of disputes and attempts to avoid uncertain outcomes casting clouds over the futures of individuals.

With a team of legal professionals and a range of legal protection products, DAS supports private citizens, professionals and businesses with technical, timely and qualified support from lawyers and experts as well as unlimited telephone consultation, out of court assistance and legal advice. DAS is a leading brand in international legal protection insurance, with 13m customers in 17 countries. In 2017, its income totalled €1,081m.

Searching for Something Smarter 

DAS found itself facing a problem that is shared by many established companies – legacy IT systems fast approaching their best-before dates. Systems created years ago could never have anticipated the rapid increase in business-related data, so we’re reaching the limits of their capabilities. Also, users were keen to sample the fresh analytical opportunities that modern, technologically innovative solutions now offer but that systems in the past hadn’t even anticipated. Finally, with limited IT resources, DAS wanted its own staff to be able to get hands-on with simpler, more user-friendly systems. DAS is, after all, built to serve customers who have legal problems, so that’s what DAS wanted the lion’s share of its time and resources to be concentrated on.

A tipping point was reached when DAS decided that its existing systems were causing as many problems as they were solving by becoming hard to maintain and creating data flow problems that made it hard to keep track of all data. In order to provide the analysis and insight that the business required, DAS went looking for a replacement system that would meet two main criteria. Firstly, it wanted something that had a dashboard and front-end capable of being used and understood by anyone within the business. Secondly, it needed something that would allow model building for bespoke functions, something that the current system didn’t allow.

Fast, Modern and Easy to Use 

DAS provides experts in legal defence, not IT, so the next move was to get help. “So we chose a partner,” says Cecilia Bergamini, Planning and Controlling Manager from DAS. “We found someone we knew we could work with, we expressed our needs and we entrusted ourselves to experts in that field.”

The experts being SDG Group, an Italian IT partner of the global company TimeXtender. SDG Group realized that implementing TimeXtender to build a future-proof data estate would be a much better way to proceed than attempting to update or patch the existing system with new technology. For instance, TimeXtender’s ability to incrementally load data into the source system and still provide accurate fields was seen as a huge improvement.

Speed too, was a factor. “The performance wasn’t even comparable with the past,” notes Cecilia. We were refreshing data once a week because it took two days to refresh. If the extraction from our system started on Friday it would be finished on Sunday, so by Monday morning, we could load the compiled data. Yet, demonstrations with TimeXtender showed, it could do in two hours what had taken us two days.”

Flexibility and Functionality Built-In 

By choosing TimeXtender on the advice of external partner, SDG Group, DAS Italia made sure everyone knew what they were doing before the company took a big organizational step. As for the main benefit? Cecilia thinks it’s simplicity, plain and simple.

“TimeXtender presents information simply and logically,” she says. “We can see data, analyze it and add fields without relying on IT support to make changes. Since we are not IT people, having a sufficient level of autonomy to see what we need to see, to add, modify and to model new things, that’s crucial.”